In many geographic areas, including municipalities, regional governmental areas, private oversight zones, and the like, emergency call centers are provided for quickly responding to incidents of an emergency nature and the like. Thus, it may be that a city or county maintains and operates such an emergency call center for the residents and visitors thereof who may come upon or be involved in an incident and wish to report such incident so that an appropriate response may be made by or on behalf of the call center.
Typically, in the United States, such a call center may be known as a ‘911 call center’, for the reason that ‘911’ has been established as an all-purpose emergency telephone calling number, or the like, and for the reason that calls to ‘911’ initiated from within a predetermined geographic area are typically automatically routed to the 911 call center for such area. Presumptively, an individual initiating a 911 call that is to be routed to a local 911 call center is wishing to perform a public service by reporting an incident of an emergency nature so that the emergency incident can be responded to in an appropriate manner. Accordingly, it may be that the call-initiating individual is reporting to the call center an incident where he has witnessed smoke or fire, in which case the call center may respond to the incident by summoning a local fire department to investigate and handle the incident. Likewise, it may be that the call-initiating individual is reporting to the call center an incident where she was involved in an automobile accident, in which case the call center may respond to the incident by summoning a local police department, a paramedic squad, and an ambulance to investigate and handle the incident.
In at least some instances, an individual initiating a call to a call center to report an incident is indeed the only caller reporting the incident to the call center. Thus, a man calling to report a gas leak may be the only person aware of the gas leak and the only person calling to report same. In at least some other instances, an individual initiating a call to a call center to report an incident is one of several callers reporting the incident to the call center. Thus, a woman calling to report a neighbor's house on fire may be one of several people aware of the house fire and the third person calling to report same.
When only one person calls to report an incident, the call center receiving the call presumptively handles same in a relatively straightforward manner. For example, it may be that a live agent at the call center collects appropriate information regarding the incident, creates an incident report or the like corresponding to the incident, and dispatches an appropriate emergency response corresponding to the incident and the report thereof. Notably, the collected information regarding the incident may include an identification of the nature of the incident and the location of the incident, among other things.
Also notably, it may be that the call center itself automatically collects appropriate information regarding the incident, where such automatically collected information may be presented to the agent handling the received call and/or may be employed to direct the emergency response, among other things. For example, the automatically collected information may include a preliminary identification of the person calling to report the incident and an identification of a telephone number or the like of the person, based on the telephone or the like employed for the call. Perhaps more importantly, the automatically collected information may also include a geographic location of the person calling to report the incident, again based on the telephone or the like employed for the call. As may be appreciated, such geographic location may be among other things a predetermined address if the telephone is a landline telephone at such predetermined address, or may be a set of spatial coordinates if the telephone is a mobile telephone. In the latter case, and as is known, the spatial coordinates may be GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates or the like as obtained directly from the telephone, or may be such coordinates or the like as obtained indirectly, perhaps by cell phone tower triangulation techniques, among other things.
When more than one person calls to report the same incident, the call center receiving the ‘repetitive’ calls presumptively handles each of the repetitive calls in a similar manner. Notably, it is to be appreciated that the call center receiving and handling all of the repetitive calls must dedicate resources that are essentially duplicative and therefore wasteful. In particular, multiple agents at the call center handling the repetitive calls are diverted from answering other calls regarding other incidents, and multiple call lines of the call center are tied up and unavailable, among other things. Also, in a stressful environment such as may be expected at a call center, it might be natural for a single agent at the call center handling multiple ones of the repetitive calls to be emotionally worn by same, especially if the corresponding incident is of a particularly horrific or gruesome nature.
In the instance where the number of repetitive calls corresponding to a particular incident is relatively low, say on the order of 2-5, the repetitive calls may be considered to be merely annoying, and perhaps an unavoidable aspect of the operation of a call center, but not overly burdensome, generally speaking. However, in the instance where the number of repetitive calls corresponding to a particular incident is relatively high, say on the order of 20-50 or even more, the repetitive calls may be considered to be a much more serious matter.
As but one example, consider an incident where multiple vehicles are involved in a crash on an urban highway. In such crash incident, it is likely that the occupants in the vehicles will call on mobile telephones to report same to a corresponding call center, if they are able to do so. Notably, and moreover, it is also likely that occupants of many vehicles on the highway passing the incident will call on mobile telephones to report the incident to the call center. Further, it is likely that many nearby pedestrians if present will call on mobile telephones to report the incident to the call center, and that people in nearby houses and other buildings will do same by way of mobile and landline telephones. As should be appreciated, most anybody nearby could be expected to call to report the incident, including pilots flying overhead, passengers on passing trains and buses, drivers on intersecting roadways, and the like. Additionally, people farther away might call too, if for example the incident produced smoke, or if a person heard from someone else about the crash and wanted to report same.
Quite simply, it is not unreasonable to expect the call center to be inundated with repetitive calls, all relating to the aforementioned crash incident, perhaps on the order of 500-1000 or even more if the crash incident is relatively severe and highly visible. It is also not unreasonable to expect the inundation at the call center to last for an hour or more. Anecdotally, it has been found that such inundations of repetitive calls from a single incident happen at call centers on a regular basis. Moreover, it has also been anecdotally found that the possibility of such inundations has required such call centers to increase staffing and line capacity to handle such inundations, all at great cost and expenditure of resources.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system and method for handling repetitive calls relating to a single incident at a call center. In particular, a need exists for such a system and method where an incident is identified from a call to the call center, and where further calls to the call center are identified as being potentially related to the identified incident. Further, a need exists for such a system and method where the potentially related calls are at least initially automatically handled to determine whether such potentially related calls are in fact repetitive calls and if so are diverted from agents at the call center.